ATLANTA—Kentucky coach John Calipari is attempting to redefine, sort of, the options available when his Wildcats take the floor for one of their early non-conference games.

For instance, when UK faces Duke at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Champions Classic doubleheader at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta: “It’s either we win or we learn.”

Calipari has been head coach at Kentucky long enough to understand how angrily the vast fan base can react to what he now calls “learning.” They know it by that other L-word.

The Wildcats avoided a bleak night in their state by squeezing out a 72-69 victory over Maryland in their opener Friday, but Calipari discovered a variety of areas in which his team—which featured four freshmen playing an average of nearly 29 minutes each—was ill-prepared to put itself on public display.

—Rebounding. Maryland missed 50 shots against the length presented inside by centers Nerlens Noel and Willie Cauley-Stein, but the Terps got back 28 of those and won the rebounding battle overall, 54-38.

Calipari said on a Monday morning conference call, “We hadn’t spent a whole lot of time on rebounding, other than scrimmaging and playing. We didn’t rebound. Because I thought, ‘We’re so big and long, we’ll be able to rebound.’ Well, if you don’t work on it, they don’t know it.”

—Zone offense. Maryland employed a 1-3-1 for which UK was entirely unprepared according to its coach. “The guys looked over at me. We hadn’t worked on zone yet, zone offense. “They looked at me and I said, ‘Move the ball.’ That’s a great zone offense.” Calipari said he shouted at freshman forward Alex Poythress to get to the middle of the zone, where a teammate found him for a dunk that chased the Terps out of their zone. “Thank goodness,” Calipari said.

—Press offense. The Wildcats had only 12 turnovers in the game, but Calipari did not feel his team was adequately prepared to face an extended defense. “We’ll be better if we’re pressed,” he said.

Calipari said what he saw against Maryland convinced him to change some of the practice plans for the weekend leading up to the Duke game.

“I’m trying to get us to be solid in a few things right now, which we’re not,” Calipari said. “What I liked was the will to win at the end of the game. We are where we are right now. We’re a mid-November team. We’ll be right 30 percent of the time. We’re wrong 70 percent.

“My concern right now is, when they really get after us, how do we respond? When they make a run, which they’re going to do, how do we respond? This is what I’m going to learn about my team.”